A season of contrasts

[Billikan]

This win against LaSalle would make most observers think this is a different team than the one that was playing in the Billiken uniforms just 6 weeks ago. Today we saw the Kevin Lisch that everyone expected playing without hesitation or any felt need to play in the static way we were early in the season. I give the coaches and the players real credit because at least for this one game our offense looked much better. A big part of that was the play of Danny Brown off the bench.

But just as big a surprise was our lack of defensive effort. I never saw a Bills team in recent years give up so many open shots. It was like we completely forgot that you need to close out on shooters. It was only because we shot the ball lights out that we were able to win this game. If we could somehow combine our great recent defense until today with today's offense this could be a really good team finishing out the season. But it is hard to believe we will ever shoot 63% again!

This was a must win and we won the game. Now we must pick up another win or two or three in an unexpected place. Our best chance might be at Dayton. Since our game they have been in a terrible funk--our defense was great in that game and other teams must have learned something from the tape. With two big time players out we need to steal one on their court. Richmond killed Dayton today and the Dukes killed George Washington. Charlotte is playing very well as is St. Joes who beat Temple on their home court. Of course X is really playing well as is UMass. Our remaining schedule is very tough. Today's win will only mean something if we can beat some of the good teams in the conference.

We have played four pretty good games in a row after a series of pretty lousy games. I believe the reasons are:

1. The improved play of Tommie and Kevin who now seem to have been freed up by the coaches to do what they do well.

2. The much improved play of Danny off the bench--he has been a great surprise.

3. The reduced minutes of BE--he is just not much of a factor on the defensive end and he does not rebound tough or set very good screens. We are generally better if his minutes are limited.

4. The emergence of AK as a big off the bench who can give us some decent minutes and make some space under the basket.

5. The even better offensive play of Luke Meyer along with his gritty defense and hustle.

As I watched the game today I got really excited about the prospects for this team when Kevin and Tommie are seniors and will be playing with the hot shot new recruits. But then I realized that Luke and Danny and Polk (on the defensive end) will really be missed. So let's hope we can stay hot and get back to our great defense and pull off a miracle this year. Go Bills

[JaleJarr]

But just as big a surprise was our lack of defensive effort. I never saw a Bills team in recent years give up so many open shots. It was like we completely forgot that you need to close out on shooters. It was only because we shot the ball lights out that we were able to win this game. If we could somehow combine our great recent defense until today with today's offense this could be a really good team finishing out the season. But it is hard to believe we will ever shoot 63% again!

I really hope I'm wrong but I think we will see this kind of inconsistent play. My reasoning is the team

is not deep enough to sustain that kind of effort on both sides of the ball. So you'll have a game like LaSalle where they can't matchup with us talent-wise defensively and we score with ease followed by

a Temple team who are not much offensively but can stop us defensively. Again I pray that I'm wrong.

[dewey33]

I really hope I'm wrong but I think we will see this kind of inconsistent play. My reasoning is the team

is not deep enough to sustain that kind of effort on both sides of the ball. So you'll have a game like LaSalle where they can't matchup with us talent-wise defensively and we score with ease followed by

a Temple team who are not much offensively but can stop us defensively. Again I pray that I'm wrong.

Our rpi jumped very little with this win...but we had to have it!

http://www.realtimerpi.com/rpi_224_Men.html

With the A-10 so balanced this year, we can hang around if we string together a few wins....

is the Dayton game being carried locally? Or do I need to plan on Buffalo Wild WIngs that night?

[BillifromPhilly]

Well, this was my first chance to see the Bills up front and close from the lovely confines of TomGola Arena.....it was a good win and a troublesome one...first , it was great to see LM play so well....undersized against La Salle's front line, he continued to be the only muscle on the floor and had excellent shot selection....really was the glue with KL's hot hand to lead us past a team that unfortunately was aided by the local tradition of homer zebras that had the Explorers in the bonus with more than twelve minutes left to play.....Tommie's second half , when he broke away and took it to the basket(including an acrobatic deomoralizing left handed baseline jam) gave glimpses of what we might see if someone would consistently be able to rebound and get the ball to him with a quick outlet to the open court....Danny Brown looked like a player and contributed great minutes.....Barry ,playing against a much taller front line showed aggresive style under the basket for some short power shots that will be need to give the outside guys some rooom....the rest , was tough to watch....Husak was doing his Fred Munster ball pick imitation and was out quickly after playing a meek inside game....Polk is still a non shooter and let his man sag into the lanes to clog them......the rest looked like adequate rest providers as Majerus hustled people in and out for much of the game

But all in it was a W....never mind about the team....La Salle is athletic enough to win some games .....but we got one on the road, overcame home officiating, took great shots in the second half and bellied up on defense when we needed a stop late in the game....a good way to go into Dayton....they're undersized and , for the first half anyway, pay way to much time on an offensive half court play scheme that does not capitalize on their overall size and talent.....but they saw that they can overcome a lot and play a solid game.....I was proud to be there and see this kind of effort and result...if this was good, I'm hoping more is better

[cheeseman]

This was good win because we needed it - period. Does not matter who it was against or how we did it. It was on the road and it makes up for the loss to GW. Another road win this year will make up for the Temple loss at home should be get one. The Dayton loss at home was not one we probably really should have expected to have in the win column if we are being truthful once we saw how this team's season was going. The Rhody game was a big win. Can we be 500 in the conf - possible but will not be easy.

Nobody shackled anybody on this team. All RM wanted was the players to take appropriate shots. The newspaper reported that at half time RM had gotten on TL and that was probably the reason why he had a more aggressive second half. Even the TV commentators said that in the second half TL was moving towards the basket rather than holding back as he did in the first half. KL - has finally made the transition to RM's expectations offensively. LM has truly prospered on RM's style. DB, finally playing like we had hoped but I think Jarr said it best, DB is not being asked to do things that he can not do as he was before.

I will admit that I missed the last 3 home games since I was out of the country but my son who lives in San Diego would leave me voice messages about the results and the newspaper summaries so I was not completely lost. What I saw yesterday was a team that is weak on quality depth and was holding on for dear life - that is why the lack of defense was there - of course the refs did not help the situation either. Our team can play great defense and it will have a negative impact on their offense or they can focus on the offense and be a little soft on defense. They simply do not have the quality depth to do both. This is why this year will be a struggle in every game. I do agree with Billikan that I think next year TL and KL will be better all year and that should help with the merging of the 5 freshmen into the line up. He is also correct when he says that the emergence of AK is very helpful but he only played 9 minutes of basic basketball and we will need more from him specifically because BH seems to have regressed - how do you foul out in 9 minutes of play?

Any conference road win is a big deal so lets rejoice and keep our fingers crossed for Dayton - they took a spanking by Richmond last night.

[kshoe]

We have played four pretty good games in a row after a series of pretty lousy games.

Billikan, what series of pretty lousy games are you talking about? If you look at the schedule, the last four games were preceded by the GW game which was preceded by wins over SIU, Loyola and IUPUI.

Really, I think one could make an argument that except for the GW game we've played decent basektball since the Sam Houston game. The Temple game being the only other loss in the bunch that we could consider bad.

[Box and Won]

is the Dayton game being carried locally? Or do I need to plan on Buffalo Wild WIngs that night?

Don't know if it's on TV, but it is available online.

[Westy03]

Don't know if it's on TV, but it is available online.

Is it free to watch online or do you have to pay for it

[billiken_roy]

imo, the only reason that the game yesterday was as close as it was can be credited to the wonderful job of yesterday's referee's. with about 4 minutes to go they showed laSalle had shot 17 free throws to our 2. that is just ridiculous. no way any game should be that lopsided.

the final box shows the fouls and trips to the line closer, but only because the last 2 minutes lasalle started to foul in an effort to try to play the clock/foul shooting contest game.

just horrible officiating.

[kshoe]

imo, the only reason that the game yesterday was as close as it was can be credited to the wonderful job of yesterday's referee's. with about 4 minutes to go they showed laSalle had shot 17 free throws to our 2. that is just ridiculous. no way any game should be that lopsided.

the final box shows the fouls and trips to the line closer, but only because the last 2 minutes lasalle started to foul in an effort to try to play the clock/foul shooting contest game.

just horrible officiating.

Agree 100%.

People that see me at the games know how into the refs I get but most times after the game I'll say the refs were on average fair and didn't cost us the game. Yesterday was something different altogether. It was bad in the 1st half but at one point in the 2nd half they had a 13 to 2 foul advantage or something like that. There were a couple gross calls where our big men stood straight up, didn't move, they bumped into us and a foul was called. On the other end Lisch and Tommie were hit driving to the hoop continuously with almost no calls. There is no doubt in my mind we would have won that game by 20 if the refs hadn't been so 1 sided.

Horrible officiating is one thing when it goes both ways but yesterday was way too one sided.

[Scrivener]

Agree 100%.

People that see me at the games know how into the refs I get but most times after the game I'll say the refs were on average fair and didn't cost us the game. Yesterday was something different altogether. It was bad in the 1st half but at one point in the 2nd half they had a 13 to 2 foul advantage or something like that. There were a couple gross calls where our big men stood straight up, didn't move, they bumped into us and a foul was called. On the other end Lisch and Tommie were hit driving to the hoop continuously with almost no calls. There is no doubt in my mind we would have won that game by 20 if the refs hadn't been so 1 sided.

Horrible officiating is one thing when it goes both ways but yesterday was way too one sided.

Found this link to a Charlotte beat-reporter's rant about A-10 officiating on Timmerman's blog.

http://gmine.blogspot.com/2008/01/atlantic...ing-is-bad.html

Kind of makes you wonder how some of these zebras keep their jobs...

...and it makes you wonder whether anyone at the league has this issue on their radar.

[billiken_roy]

i would love to see what the pay charts are for the officials of the big east, big ten, big 12, sec, acc, pac-10, a-10 and mvc.

any bets which conference pays their refs the least?

you get what you pay for.

[kshoe]

i would love to see what the pay charts are for the officials of the big east, big ten, big 12, sec, acc, pac-10, a-10 and mvc.

any bets which conference pays their refs the least?

you get what you pay for.

I once sat next to a ref on a flight. He was still young and not high on the pecking order (he was excited about doing an SIU game later in the year) but he said that there is so much crossover between conferences these days its not about refs belonging to a single conference but rather the "good" refs get first choice of what games they want to do. He said, for instance that a guy like Steve Whelmer is basically given the schedule at the beginning of the year and he gets to choose whatever games he wants. I'm sure pay factors into their decision but since Whelmer and O'Neal and crew are on t.v. almost every day (the Mighigan St. game right now for instance) I wonder if exposure also factors into their decisions. Since the A-10 is rarely on national t.v. (unless you count CSTV) we may get the 3rd and 4th tier refs even if we do pay the same....but we probably don't.

[Billikan]

Billikan, what series of pretty lousy games are you talking about? If you look at the schedule, the last four games were preceded by the GW game which was preceded by wins over SIU, Loyola and IUPUI.

Really, I think one could make an argument that except for the GW game we've played decent basektball since the Sam Houston game. The Temple game being the only other loss in the bunch that we could consider bad.

I probably got carried away because of the memories of GW, BC, Sam Houston State, Long Beach and Kent State. I agree the the SIU and IUPUI wins were decent games for the Bills and the Loyola game was like LaSalle--not a good team but a must win that we put in the win column.

[Billikan]

I once sat next to a ref on a flight. He was still young and not high on the pecking order (he was excited about doing an SIU game later in the year) but he said that there is so much crossover between conferences these days its not about refs belonging to a single conference but rather the "good" refs get first choice of what games they want to do. He said, for instance that a guy like Steve Whelmer is basically given the schedule at the beginning of the year and he gets to choose whatever games he wants. I'm sure pay factors into their decision but since Whelmer and O'Neal and crew are on t.v. almost every day (the Mighigan St. game right now for instance) I wonder if exposure also factors into their decisions. Since the A-10 is rarely on national t.v. (unless you count CSTV) we may get the 3rd and 4th tier refs even if we do pay the same....but we probably don't.

Our refs are so bad that I actually thought that yesterday was sort of typical. Overall, they were terrible and to me it seemed they were trying to influence the outcome so the Bills would lose. But I have thought that in several league games this year and I expect it will get worse when we start playing the teams with a real chance to get into the tournament. The A10 is now a pretty good league with some of the worst officiating in all of college basketball.

[BillifromPhilly]

Our refs are so bad that I actually thought that yesterday was sort of typical. Overall, they were terrible and to me it seemed they were trying to influence the outcome so the Bills would lose. But I have thought that in several league games this year and I expect it will get worse when we start playing the teams with a real chance to get into the tournament. The A10 is now a pretty good league with some of the worst officiating in all of college basketball.

Being an ex high school and junior college official, it was painful to see three officials work the floor and have one , in particulat blow ten fouls on the Billikens midway through the second half.....the Bills won, kept their poise, so did the coaches, .......then the officials called a flurry of fouls on La Salle late in the game to help them stop the clock as quickly as possible.....road games are tough enough.....and refs will always seem to lean against the road team....but this is the facts of life.....wait til we play St Joe's in their bandbox of a gym later in February.....but, we're making progress and we're behind them in this year of transition

[brianstl]

imo, the only reason that the game yesterday was as close as it was can be credited to the wonderful job of yesterday's referee's. with about 4 minutes to go they showed laSalle had shot 17 free throws to our 2. that is just ridiculous. no way any game should be that lopsided.

the final box shows the fouls and trips to the line closer, but only because the last 2 minutes lasalle started to foul in an effort to try to play the clock/foul shooting contest game.

just horrible officiating.

I normally won't whine about the officiating. I believe the bad calls normally end up balancing themselves out, but this game was brutal. If this game had a halfway decent crew we win by 15-20. The officiating is horrible in this conference, but the LaSalle game was the worst I have seen.